Torture Is
News But It's Not Newby John
Pilgerwww.dissidentvoice.orgMay 9, 2004First Published in the
Daily Mirror

When
I first went to report the American war against Vietnam, in the
1960s, I visited the Saigon offices of the great American newspapers
and TV companies, and the international news agencies.

I was struck by the
similarity of displays on many of their office pinboards. "That's
where we hang our conscience," said an agency photographer.

There were
photographs of dismembered bodies, of soldiers holding up severed
ears and testicles and of the actual moments of torture. There were
men and women being beaten to death, and drowned, and humiliated in
stomach-turning ways. On one photograph was a stick-on balloon above
the torturer's head, which said: "That'll teach you to talk to the
press."

The question came
up whenever visitors caught sight of these pictures: why had they
not been published? A standard response was that newspapers would
not publish them, because their readers would not accept them. And
to publish them, without an explanation of the wider circumstances
of the war, was to "sensationalize".

At first, I
accepted the apparent logic of this; atrocities and torture by "us"
were surely aberrations by definition. My education thereafter was
rapid; for this rationale did not explain the growing evidence of
civilians killed, maimed, made homeless and sent mad by
"anti-personnel" bombs dropped on villages, schools and hospitals.

Nor did it explain
the children burned to a bubbling pulp by something called napalm,
or farmers hunted in helicopter "turkey shoots", or a "suspect"
tortured to death with a rope around his neck, dragged behind a jeep
filled with doped and laughing American soldiers.

Nor did it explain
why so many soldiers kept human parts in their wallets and special
forces officers who kept human skulls in their huts, inscribed with
the words: "One down, a million to go."

Philip Jones
Griffiths, the great Welsh freelance photographer with whom I worked
in Vietnam, tried to stop an American officer blowing to bits a
huddled group of women and children.

"They're
civilians," he yelled.

"What civilians?"
came the reply.

Jones Griffiths and
others tried to interest the news agencies in pictures that told the
truth about that atrocious war. The response often was: "So what's
new?"

The difference
today is that the truth of the equally atrocious Anglo-American
invasion of Iraq is news. Moreover, leaked Pentagon documents make
clear that torture is widespread in Iraq. Amnesty International says
it is "systematic".

And yet, we have
only begun to identify the unspeakable element that unites the
invasion of Vietnam with the invasion of Iraq. This element draws
together most colonial occupations, no matter where or when. It is
the essence of imperialism, a word only now being restored to our
dictionaries. It is racism.

In Kenya in the
1950s, the British slaughtered an estimated 10,000 Kenyans and ran
concentration camps where the conditions were so harsh that 402
inmates died in just one month. Torture, flogging and abuse of women
and children were commonplace. "The special prisons," wrote the
imperial historian V.G. Kiernan, "were probably as bad as any
similar Nazi or Japanese establishments."

None of this was
news at the time. The "Mau Mau terror" was reported and perceived
one way: as "demonic" black against white. The racist message was
clear, but "our" racism was never mentioned.

In Kenya, as in the
failed American attempt to colonize Vietnam, as in Iraq, racism
fuelled the indiscriminate attacks on civilians, and the torture.
When they arrived in Vietnam, the Americans regarded the Vietnamese
as human lice. They called them "gooks" and "dinks" and "slopes" and
they killed them in industrial quantities, just as they had
slaughtered the Native Americans; indeed, Vietnam was known as
"Indian country".

In Iraq, nothing
has changed.

In boasting openly
about killing "rats in their nest," US marine snipers, who in
Falluja shot dead women, children and the elderly, just as German
snipers shot dead Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, were reflecting the
racism of their leaders.

Paul W Wolfowitz,
the Deputy Defense Secretary who is said to be the architect of the
invasion of Iraq, has spoken of "snakes" and "draining the swamps"
in the "uncivilized parts of the world".

Much of this modern
imperial racism was invented in Britain. Listen to its subtle
expressions, as British spokesmen find their weasel words in
refusing to acknowledge the numbers of Iraqis killed or maimed by
their cluster bombs, whose actual effects are no different from the
effects of suicide bombers; they are weapons of terrorism. Listen to
Adam Ingram, the armed forces minister, drone on in parliament,
refusing to say how many innocent people are the victims of his
government.

In Vietnam, the
shooting of women and their babies in the village of My Lai was
called an "American Tragedy" by Newsweek magazine. Be prepared for
more of the "our tragedy" line that invites sympathy for the
invaders.

The Americans left
three million dead in Vietnam and a once bountiful land devastated
and poisoned with the effects of the chemical weapons they used.
While American politicians and Hollywood wrung their hands over GIs
missing-in-action, who gave a damn for the Vietnamese?

In Iraq, nothing
has changed.

By the most
conservative estimates, the Americans and the British have left
11,000 civilians dead. Include Iraqi conscripts, and the figure
quadruples.

"We count every
screw driver, but we don't count dead Iraqis," said an American
officer during the 1991 slaughter. Adam Ingram may not be as
literate, but the dishonouring of human life is the same.

Yes, the atrocities
and torture are news now. But how are they news? asks the writer
Ahdaf Soueif. A BBC news presenter describes the torture pictures as
"merely mementoes". Yes, of course: just like the human parts kept
in wallets in Vietnam.

BBC commentators --
always the best measure of the British establishment thinking on its
feet -- remind us that the torturing, humiliating of soldiers "does
not compare with Saddam Hussein's systematic tortures and
executions". Saddam, noted Ahdaf Soueif, "is now the moral compass
of the West".

We cannot give back
Iraqi lives extinguished or ruined by those acting in our name. At
the very least, we must demand that those responsible for this epic
crime get out of Iraq now and that we have an opportunity to
prosecute and judge them, and to make amends to the Iraqi people.
Anything less disqualifies "us" as civilized.

John Pilger
is a renowned investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker.
His latest documentary film, “Breaking the Silence: Truth and Lies
in the War on Terror” was broadcast on the ITV network in the UK on
September 22. In 2003, Pilger was named the winner of the Sophie
Prize, one of the world's most
distinguished environmental and development prizes. Hewas also named Media Personality of the
Year at the 2003 EMMA awards. His latest book is
The New Rulers of the World (Verso, 2002). Visit John
Pilger’s website at:
http://www.johnpilger.com